The present invention relates to an amplifier design, and more particularly, to a class-D amplifier with pulse-width modulation (PWM) common-mode control and an associated method for performing class-D amplification.
A class-D amplifier is basically a switching amplifier. It has a power efficiency approaching 100%. That is, most of the power supplied to the class-D amplifier is delivered to the load. Conventionally, a low-dropout (LDO) regulator with high power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) is adopted to supply a clean power to the class-D amplifier. This LDO is used to mitigate the noise coupling through or generated from the power management circuit that may include buck/boost converters. However, this LDO causes additional power loss and decreases the energy efficiency of the whole system. Therefore, in order to avoid this undesired power loss, the supply voltage of a class-D amplifier is preferred to be powered by a power source (e.g., a battery) without using a LDO, which lays critical emphasis on the PSRR of the Class-D audio amplifier. Consequently, for high performance of audio applications, there is a need for an innovative class-D amplifier (CDA) design with high power-supply rejection ratio (PSRR) and high linearity (e.g., low Total Harmonic Distortion with Noise (THD+N)).